Posts Tagged ‘handmade’

Jen Allyson always designs such fabulous lines for My Mind’s Eye, and MME always does such a fabulous line delivering it as actual product! Miss Caroline is no exception. I’m also very excited about their newest addition — Rhonna Farrer has joined MME as a designer and she did a fabulous job! Her Follow Your Heart line is gorgeous! And if you’re into trying sewing projects like colorful handbags, watch all the way to the end!

DCWV blew our minds! They almost put Disneyland to shame when it comes to creating fantasy displays. Video doesn’t quite translate, but it will give you an idea! Visit www.dcwv.com for instructions for similar projects.

The doodle started when I was pulling out of a parking space, and an unusual pedestrian path caught my eye. I grabbed a receipt and sketched it on the far left, and then I had a spontaneous desire to add the circles and make it a tree. I was feeling whimsical.

I liked the tree top, but not the trunk, so I tried again on the right side of the receipt. And you can see that two days later I tried again a third time and was really happy with the results. I made a note that the tree top felt like abundance to me. Later when I flipped through my book and saw it, I added a note saying I was calling my tree an Abundance Tree.

Refining Your Doodles

Later I sat down with a Copic Multi-Liner and tried making a tree that I could actually use for scrapbooking and mixed-media art. In the process I devised a trunk I really loved, though my tree ended up looking more like a mushroom. I made a mental note that the circles were too tight and tried again, this time adding color with my Copic Sketches…

Here’s another example of where doodling has led me to an eventual hand-made embellishment for scrapbooking…

Grocery List Doodle: Happy Mushroom Colony…

Refining the Happy Mushroom Colony in my Scrap Journal…

Making a Happy Mushroom Colony as a Scrapbook Embellishment…

I’m sure I will eventually use my abundance tree in a scrapbook or mixed-media project, and I’m already making more.

Translating Your Ideas into Different Mediums and Styles

The key is asking yourself the question in the first place — “How can I translate this piece of inspiration into something else?”

I’ve been asking myself how I could translate my Abundance Trees into a painting project. Because I had the question in my head, I got the answer when I saw this dress on Elsie Flannigan. I saved the dress to my Art Inspiration board on Pinterest and decided I would use it as inspiration to dress up my boring lamp shade. I practiced first in my art journal…

I didn’t try to copy the pattern on Elsie’s dress. I took one more look at it before pulling out my paints, and then closed the picture. There are two reasons I rarely try to copy directly when doing artistic projects…

You set yourself up for frustration and negative self-talk because it’s very difficult to copy something just right. In fact, sometimes your own project actually needs you to do it a little differently and it’s hard to see that need if you’re copying. I think of my sources as inspiration, rather than a source to copy exactly.

If you study the inspiration piece beforehand, and then put it away when you’re actually going to work on your project, you free yourself to make the piece your own.

This is how I use inspiration for my scrapbooking as well. I almost never scraplift, but I sometimes do think back to a layout I liked recently and I recall the overall idea of why I liked it. If you do that, you benefit from the inspiration of others, but you’ll make projects that are completely your own.

So now, from noticing a pedestrian walk and and doodling it into my scrap journal, I’ve developed some art I can use for scrapbooking, for mixed-media projects, and for painting projects as well. It’s amazing how it all flows for you when you pay attention to your environment, act on your observations and idea bursts, experiment with them, develop them, and ask yourself how-questions.

Want to be less wasteful? How about more creative? I think the two go together! For today’s episode I’ll show you how you can repurpose items you would normally throw away and turn them into handmade books for journaling or collecting memorabilia.

But if you would like to know how to make a similar book with items you have on hand, and if you think you would enjoy many of the scrapbooking ideas in the 152 other tutorials in our archives, how about taking a look at our Membership Information Page?

Congratulations to Jana Olivera, who submitted an art journal that we chose to highlight this month! Her art journal a response to challenge topic #4 – Let’s Get Artsy.
Jana’s pages come from the paper towels she used to clean up her paint during the July 13th Paperclipping Live event when Jackie and Reenie filled in for me. Jana used toilet paper rolls as the foundation of her pages.

Next week’s Paperclipping episode will be a tutorial on how I’ve made my own handmade journal by re-purposing those gorgeous, colorful paper towels, but it’s very different from Jana’s and I’m loving the way Jana put her own book together. You can see more pictures of Jana’s gorgeous art journal by watching her slide show.

What the judges had to say

We think this is a beautiful art journal. There are so many textures and elements. The layering and details are complex.

There are so many colors in this book but what prevents them from overwhelming us is the balance of color intensity. Each page has a brighter, more intense feature color that pops from the foundation of softer hues.

We love the texture of the soft crumbled paper and the subtle lines of stitching around the pages, which contrast with the shiny hard texture of the beads.

We especially love that this unique piece of art has been made from what we normally consider trash, which proves that art can be made from almost nothing.